Chapter 523: The New Crystalliers of Deadwaste

Technically Omilaena was watching the fight, but she was also thinking over her past. Unusually contemplative for her, basically just flicking the bean while other people were fighting for their lives. Put that way, she decided that she was fine with it and indulged.

Going to Deadwaste was usually considered an act of desperation, the last refuge of failures. Her first visit had almost seemed to confirm that, since she hadn't gained much strength... but she had gained Kai and Zin Nim. That had grown into something beyond her wildest projections. Yes, a relationship strangely warm and secure in a way she hadn't known she wanted, but also raw power.

As she watched the fight over the Krysali coast, Omilaena's eyes unfocused and she looked at her own soul instead.

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Name: Omilaena

Total Power: 1768

Heart of Poison: Level 92 (644)

*Prana Jewels: Level +6 (42)

Lethal Artisan: Spinel Rank (310)

Ice Refinement (121)

Path of Venomsteel: Step 10 (150)

Physique: D-9 (245)

Soul Level: 9 (81)

Azure Core (+175)

>

She was returning to Deadwaste with over 1700 Power, a force to be reckoned with on any continent. The theory that retreating to Deadwaste never worked out for anyone had been thoroughly disproven, but she had multiply reinforced her own theory that creativity and understanding would ultimately triumph over brute training.

Without her knowledge of the overall structure of power, she would never have dared to begin cultivating, or transformed it into Ice Refinement. Without her connections to the others, she could never have awakened the Path of Venomsteel. And above all, without understanding that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts, she couldn't have developed her Azure Core.

Due to all of that, Omilaena wasn't concerned about the fact that she wasn't likely to be challenged while on this trip to Deadwaste. No, it would be more useful - and more fun - to watch all her little experiments running around. Helping out some mediocre folks in Krysal and Irun was a fair price to pay for getting to experiment on such a broad scale, plus it would make Kai happy. She had to admit, his methods worked this time: acting benevolent had gotten her way more experimental progress than taking over and torturing nobles for experiments.

More of her experiments were fighting right now, so Omilaena pulled her attention away from her own thoughts to watch as the battle closed. Kai had clearly been ready to release a projectile if they were in danger, but she'd judged they'd win, with only a slight chance of one of their number perishing.

Kifaela was Omilaena's new favorite toy, and the naiad was currently fighting a cultivator with raw Physique. Her wasting disease was a limitation, and an incurable one, but even if Omilaena had been able to fix her, she didn't want to. Better to see if the naiad's intense connection to plague chakra could develop another ability, not too dissimilar from Omilaena's own, and grow into something new. That might lead to interesting Physique developments, though that was years down the road.

By contrast, Tori Quondan was a real puzzle. She had a shit ability and the creativity to use it more effectively, but was it actually possible to make that work? Omilaena's own ability to form metal was ten times better, yet she was intrigued by trying to make this entirely different path actually effective.

Currently Tori was struggling against the cultivators, yet she was smart enough to take a supporting role. Before the battle she had apparently built armor for all her teammates, bronze chest-plates that intentionally dissolved to absorb a single blow. She held back, forming projectiles slowly and helping where she could.

She wasn't the weakest, though: the dryad Kyridnyiam had fallen in with the group and he was constantly needing rescuing. Other than being bizarrely pretty for a man, there wasn't much notable about him. Omilaena gave him bad odds on following up Nymidria's legacy in the future, even if Kai adopted him.

Their coordination was pretty good, but they were outnumbered by the Nascent Foundation Cultivators. Several of them burst past the other combatants and unleashed new techniques at the weaker members like Tori and Kyridnyiam.

It looked rough, and Omilaena had a few guesses about how that might go, but then fucking Bonto of Birtaegal leapt into the way. He defended his teammates with a giant shield of red mana, and deflecting all the qi obviously took a lot out of him, because he dropped to one knee. Based on his expression, he was desperate to prove he was one of them, and he managed to summon enough strength to form a second shield.

Honestly, Bonto didn't really interest Omilaena. She only wanted him for his body, by which she meant she'd like to dissect his corpse and find out more about how the "Manalance" ability worked. Given that he was Kai's pet, she'd have to settle for drawing blood and experimenting with his training.

In any case, the non-Omilaena people seemed very moved by his sacrifice, especially when he collapsed after deflecting the second assault. The cultivators roared in triumph, some even laughing that he had only stood up to two of their combined assaults. But the idiots really didn't have much situational awareness, because Bonto had purchased time for the others to act.

Mariyay Hafkrir landed atop the wall beside the others and punched the ground, creating a wall of stone. The cultivators laughed scornfully, but they didn't attack it quickly enough. While they delayed, Mariyay reinforced the back side of the stone wall with bricks that emerged from her hands and fused into the surface.

Qi actually splattered off of the reinforced stone and the cultivators were taken aback - one of them even coughed up blood, either due to recoiling qi or just sheer surprise. That was a strong wall for their level, withstanding the assault of several Nascent Foundation cultivators at once.

Personally, Omilaena was more interested in the odd expression on Mariyay's face, and the inefficiencies in her fighting style. She was clearly best suited to playing a defensive role, yet this was the first time Omilaena had seen her do so, and her set jaw spoke of stress and irritation. Another curious puzzle, and though Omilaena wasn't usually interested in personality mysteries, she'd figure out this one since it seemed important to making Mariyay's soul actually viable.

Several interminable seconds later, the cultivators got it through their soupy brains that they could go around a wall instead of smashing through with superior power. That was what passed for genius strategy on Cloudspire.

As one of them flew a sword around the barrier to attack the weakened fighters from the side, Untariin of Cuulisi burst up from below in a storm of knives. The man knew what he was doing, sending knives to deflect his target's panicked qi bolts even at point blank range. Once he was up close and he got a knife into that weak cultivator Physique, it was over.

There were other cultivators flying in, but it had taken them too long and they'd lost their moment of advantage: their targets had backup coming too. The last of the trainees she knew was first: Ankrastor of the Undertow unleashed a flood of flame, clearly some sort of adaptation of a water technique to fire. He burned a ton of his mana doing so, but the fireflood swept all of the cultivators back in a bloody line.

He was one of the heavy hitters of the new trainees, and though Omilaena hadn't said it out loud, she was intrigued by his soul. His parents had done so many things to prepare him to be Waterborn, yet not a single one of those actually appeared in the outer layer of his soul. Some customs were likely superstition, while others definitely had an effect: those strange incompatibilities had been what made him considered an unteachable failure.

Of course, he'd been able to overcome that on his own, developing a style of "liquid flame" that forced one element into another's box. Omilaena didn't think that was the best he could do, not by a long shot. What she needed to do was figure out exactly how his deeper soul had been impacted by his preparations, and that was a mystery she had yet to uncover.

The trainees were cleaning up while the fight against the Earth Souls grew more intense. It looked like things might be bad, until the two lunks moved forward. Omilaena remembered their names, because she always did, and even wanted them to survive because Juray seemed to care about the brothers, but honestly she was mostly curious about the results of their experiment.

Each downed another potion as soon as they got a free second and the qi flooded through them. Juray had a more poetic name, but Omilaena thought of it as the "cultivator in a bottle" potion. Cultivators tended to use brute qi force in many ways, and the technique could be mimicked to some degree. This potion reinforced the body with qi in a similar manner, making techniques and strikes from higher tiered cultivation no longer tear through defenses so easily.

It definitely seemed to work: the lunks plowed through the attacks and even did a half-decent job fighting Earth Souls.

"Oh, thank goodness." Juray let out her breath and sagged against the railing. For Omilaena this was all mildly amusing, but Juray's knuckles were white. "I was afraid..."

"Relax," Omilaena told her, stroking her hand. "There was only about a 50% chance the potions would make them explode."

"You can't distract me with jokes, not when they're all fighting for their lives."

"I mean it, relax. They have this under control, so you should be happy that the potion worked."

"Only partially." Juray rubbed her eyes one at a time, as if unwilling to completely look away from the battle. "I wanted to mass produce them, but these require attunement to a specific person and won't work for anyone with advanced cultivation. Those are big weaknesses in a potion."

That was one of the ideological differences between them that Omilaena had discovered: Juray wanted potions to be generic and usable by anyone, while Omilaena just took for granted that most interventions had to be created specifically for an individual. This was one of the few cases where Omilaena was willing to admit that they could both learn something from each other, since making potions anyone could use was actually an interesting challenge.

"Come back and we'll do worse!" Cragrila hurled a still living cultivator back toward their ship and he smashed through the wall.

Seeing another of their Earth Souls manhandled like that finally broke the cultivators - not that it had taken a long time, but Omilaena expected them to have less spine than that. Either this group was unusually brave or unusually desperate.

Or they had been - now they fled from a Krysali city they wouldn't have pissed in that morning, rushing back to their ship to retreat. They'd lost most of their number and not a single one of the Deadwasters was dead. Those that were injured would only come back stronger, which the cultivators probably knew. Everyone let them go and Omilaena idly watched the ship out of the corner of her eyes just in case they tried something truly stupid.

Sure, people were alive and the city was saved. Everybody was getting excited cheering about that. As far as Omilaena was concerned, it was just a pleasing result to another experiment.

.

..

.

Kai held back at first, both for the sake of security and to let the trainees bask in their victory. Eventually Zae Zin Nim confirmed that the cultivators had fled entirely out of range, and the Krysali seemed to be relaxing as well, because they'd taken down the defensive barrier and people were coming out to celebrate their saviors.

At first he watched in concern, wondering how the mixed group would be received, but here Cragrila and Nirka were heroes of the revolution and the others seemed to be welcomed easily enough. Even Untariin was celebrated, because it wasn't like his noble status was visible - he just looked Krysali to the people of the city.

When he saw a bit of a conflict brewing, Kai jumped off the Clanless to join the group. Despite all the time that had passed, some of the people in the crowd actually cheered when they saw him. Apparently his work in the revolution hadn't been forgotten.

Before any of them could get close, however, Cragrila stepped up beside him. "I kept alive one who looked dead," she confided. "It sounds like the cultivators were trying to flee here to become warlords, but there might be more to it."

"Good work," Kai told her. "Learn more later, but I'm more concerned about contacting the Frontier. They should know we're here."

"If they didn't hear about this, I tried to send a message to people who can contact them. Just... make sure this doesn't get out of hand." She faded back without explaining further.

He wasn't sure what she meant by that: the trainees were being celebrated, and Mariyay even had Krysali citizens hoisting her up on their shoulders and carrying her into town. Maybe they were a bit rambunctious, but Kai couldn't reprimand them for that, not after everything he had done in Krysal. Regardless of age, they were young.

Then he saw it: there was a group of Krysali who didn't look so grateful, moving out of the city gate toward him. Their clothes were a bit worse for the wear, but they had once been ornate: these could only be some of the remaining merchants of Krysal. Ones with strong connections, otherwise they would never have survived the revolution.

"We're grateful you saved us," one old man said ungratefully, "but what would we have done if you hadn't arrived just then?"

Kai wasn't in the mood for games, he just stepped up to the group and stared down at them. "What are you getting at?"

"Thanks to you and this bloody revolution, Krysal can't defend itself anymore. Once we had strong crystalliers to defend us against foreigners like that, now they raid our coasts. You took all our crystalliers away and left us vulnerable."

"And you decided this was the time to argue about the revolution again?"

"No, we need you to convince the leadership to make changes." The old man paused and multiple members of his group shouted out affirmations. "These peasants have no idea what they're doing and they're running Krysal into the ground. It's not long before the incursion. If we don't hand control back to people to people who understand the world, we'll be ruined. We need crystalliers to defend-"

"You have them." Kai gestured out to the trainees being swept into the cities by the crowds. "Those are your new crystalliers, and they're just the beginning."